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      Brian Wilson’s Life in Photos

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      Brian Wilson (top right) posing with the rest of the Beach Boys during a photo shoot in 1962. The band released its first album on Capitol Records that year.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesBrian Wilson (center, with bass guitar) as the Beach Boys rehearse at home in 1964 in Los Angeles.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesBrian Wilson in 1964 staring intently at sheet music while playing the piano. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesWilson (far right) performs on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in September 1964. Just months later, he decided to quit touring to concentrate on songwriting and recording.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesWilson, with the bass guitar, holds a copy of the 1963 Beach Boys album “Surfer Girl.”Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesBrian Wilson (center) and the Beach Boys perform during an appearance on the Christmas episode of the TV show “Shindig!”Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesWilson with his first wife, Marilyn Rovell.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesBrian Wilson directs from the control room while recording “Pet Sounds” in 1966 in Los Angeles. The album is now widely regarded as one of the greatest in pop music history.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesWilson (left) poses for a portrait with the rest of the Beach Boys in 1967.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesWilson shares food with his dog.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesBrian Wilson (far back left) poses with the rest of the Beach Boys on a sailboat in 1976. The group had a nostalgia-fueled comeback in the mid-70s.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesWilson performs in 1976.Ed Perlstein/Redferns, via Getty ImagesThe Beach Boys receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1980.Lennox Mclendon/Associated PressWilson plays the piano at Wembley Stadium in London in 1980.Terry Lott/Sony Music Archive, via Getty ImagesWilson (left) with Dr. Eugene Landy. Landy was a psychotherapist who helped Wilson in his recovery from drug abuse, and then became a dominant presence in his life before being blocked from contacting Wilson after an intervention by the musician’s family.Ebet Roberts/Redferns, via Getty ImagesBrian Wilson (rear center, in purple) Beach Boys appear on a 1988 episode of “Full House” that helped introduce the group to a younger generation.ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content, via Getty ImagesWilson photographed at home in Beverly Hills, Calif., in 2004.Marissa Roth for The New York TimesWilson (seated, center-right) during a performance of songs from the album “Smile” in 2004. The album featured music from the famously abandoned album of the same name from the 1960s.Karl Walter/Getty ImagesWilson performing in 2006.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesWilson accepting the best historical album award for “The Smile Sessions” onstage at the Grammys in 2013.Kevork Djansezian/Getty ImagesA barefoot Brian Wilson in 1988.Ann Summa/Getty Images More

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      Did Bob Dylan Help Announce an Album From MGK?

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      The pop-punk star’s trailer for “Lost Americana” features a familiar voice narrating about a “quest to reclaim the authentic essence of American freedom.”“‘Lost Americana,’” the familiar voice intones, “is a personal excavation of the American dream.” So begins a few sentences’ narration over a trailer released online Tuesday for an upcoming album by the artist MGK, formerly known as Machine Gun Kelly.And darned if the narrator does not sound exactly like Bob Dylan.It seems that Dylan, 84, the Nobel laureate and firmly canonized member of the American musical scene, has lent his voice to promoting the pop-punk musician’s first LP since “Mainstream Sellout” in 2022.Neither artist has publicly offered confirmation. A representative for MGK did not reply to a request for comment. A representative for Dylan said the artist is on tour and was not available.The trailer features grainy, home video-style footage of MGK — an insouciant onetime rapper who has since branched out to country, pop and pop-punk — pursuing such analog activities as riding a motorcycle, smoking cigarettes and hanging out with friends. The voice advertises the album, due in August, as “a love letter to those who seek to rediscover: the dreamers, the drifters, the defiant.”So what would bring together a tattooed musician, actor and model known for making tabloid headlines for his onetime relationship with the actress Megan Fox and … Bob Dylan?Dylan and his music have been known to pop up in surprising places — like ads for the Bank of Montreal, IBM, Chrysler, Cadillac, Victoria’s Secret and Pepsi. (Though he often doesn’t show up where you might expect — like the Nobel Prize ceremony where he was being honored, or an episode of “Saturday Night Live” on which the actor Timothée Chalamet performed his music.)Dylan and MGK have demonstrated an affinity for each other. MGK’s latest single, the jittery genre mash-up “Cliché,” features the lyric “Baby, I’m a rolling stone” — arguably a reference to the title of Dylan’s most famous song.In February, Dylan posted a video of MGK performing the rap track “Almost” on his Instagram. MGK’s response: “you having a phone is so rad,” he commented. (“Times they are a changing yo,” added another commenter.)The trailer’s director, Sam Cahill, posted it on his own Instagram account Tuesday with a caption that MGK echoed in his own feed: “Trailer narrated by …” (Cahill did not reply to a request for comment).The narration describes MGK’s new work but sounds exactly how a Dylan fan — or Dylan himself — might describe Dylan’s output: “a sonic map of forgotten places, a tribute to the spirit of reinvention and a quest to reclaim the authentic essence of American freedom.”The narrator adds, “From the gold neon diners to the rumble of the motorcycles, this is music that celebrates the beauty found in the in-between spaces where the past is reimagined and the future is forged on your own terms.”Or maybe that is just a coincidence. As someone once said, “Well, we all like motorcycles to some degree.” More

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      Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s Defense to Analyze ‘Hotel Night’ Texts With ‘Jane’

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      The music mogul’s lawyers have started walking his former girlfriend — now a government witness — through a voluminous history of text and audio messages.Sean Combs’s former girlfriend, who has said she was subjected to a pattern of degrading sex marathons with male escorts, will take the stand for her fifth day of testimony on Wednesday at the music mogul’s federal trial, as his lawyers seek to portray her as a willing participant in the encounters.On Tuesday, the defense’s cross-examination of the woman — who is testifying under the pseudonym Jane — delved into lengthy, emoji-filled text exchanges surrounding the encounters, which the couple referred to as “debauchery” or “hotel nights.”Prosecutors say Mr. Combs coerced Jane into these nights, and she has testified that they left her feeling disgusted, used and sometimes physically sick, saying that Mr. Combs tended to be dismissive when she voiced her aversion to them.While questioning Jane, the defense highlighted messages from Mr. Combs in which he appeared to be solicitous about what she wanted to do sexually; once, in 2021, he asked her about her own sexual fantasies, writing, “we don’t have to be debaucherous lol.” Jane testified that she often read “undertones” of expectation in her boyfriend’s messages, leading her to be agreeable or try to cater to the kind of voyeuristic sex that he often requested.“I know my partner and what he likes and what he wants,” she testified.The trial is scheduled to have a delayed start on Wednesday, but when testimony starts in the afternoon the defense is expected to parse more messages that help chronicle the couple’s volatile relationship, which lasted from 2021 to Mr. Combs’s arrest in 2024.Mr. Combs is facing charges of sex trafficking Jane and another former girlfriend, Casandra Ventura, who testified at the start of the trial. He is also facing a charge of racketeering conspiracy, which includes allegations that he ran a criminal enterprise that helped facilitate sex trafficking, among other crimes.Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty to the charges. His lawyers have denied that the mogul coerced the two women into sex, and they have asserted that members of Mr. Combs’s staff, including security guards and high-ranking employees, were members of lawful businesses — not a criminal conspiracy.Under questioning from the prosecution, Jane described the drug-fueled nights of sex as “performances” and said she continued to participate to please Mr. Combs and to secure time alone with the man she loved. But in 2023, the dynamic shifted when he began paying her $10,000-a-month rent in Los Angeles. She testified that Mr. Combs started to use the house as “leverage” for her to continue participating in sex with escorts.And she described a violent brawl with Mr. Combs in 2024, when he was under criminal investigation. She testified that afterward, when she had welts and a black eye from his blows, he demanded she perform oral sex on an escort despite her protests. She said she took the Ecstasy pill he gave her and complied.Olivia Bensimon More

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      The Pint-Size Singers at the Met Opera Children’s Chorus Tryouts

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      The Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus has long been an elite training ground for young singers. Getting in requires grit, personality and a soaring voice.The Metropolitan Opera’s stage door, a plain entrance hidden in the tunnels of Lincoln Center, routinely welcomes star singers, orchestra musicians, stagehands, costumers and ushers. But a different bunch of visitors arrived there on a recent afternoon, carrying stuffed toy rabbits and “Frozen” backpacks.They were children, ages 7 to 10, dressed in patent leather shoes, frilly socks and jackets decorated with dinosaurs. They were united in a common mission: to win a spot in the Met children’s chorus, a rigorous, elite training ground for young singers.“This might be the biggest day of my life,” said Naomi Lu, 9, who admires pop singers like Taylor Swift and Katy Perry. She was knitting a lilac friendship necklace to stay calm as she waited in the lobby. “I feel nervous and excited at the same time,” she said. “You could say I’m nerv-cited.”Anthony Piccolo, the director of the Met’s children’s choir, auditions a group of hopefuls.Alexander Zhou waits his turn.Skye Yang.Singing in the shower or in a school choir is one thing. But these students, who came from across New York City and its suburbs, were vying for the chance to perform at the Met, one of the world’s grandest stages, a temple of opera that presents nearly 200 performances each year. Chorus members have a chance at roles like the angelic boys in Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”; the Parisian kids in Puccini’s “La Bohème”; or the street urchins in Bizet’s “Carmen,” to name a few.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Brandee Younger Has a New Secret Weapon: Alice Coltrane’s Harp

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      Brandee Younger has noticed her audience changing lately. The harpist, composer and bandleader, whose elegant, groove-anchored sound has made her a standout presence in and around jazz in recent years, had grown accustomed to seeing a certain type of listener at her shows.“It’s, like, a Portland, 40s man,” she said with a smile during an interview last month at her East Harlem apartment, referencing demographic data on her fan base — not atypical for a contemporary jazz artist — furnished by her label.During recent tours, though, she started to notice an influx of “young girls that are, like, so excited.”It’s been an encouraging sight for Younger, 41, who said that growing up as “this little Black girl playing harp” and devoting herself to classical studies while also keeping close tabs on hip-hop and R&B, she struggled to find role models.“I want to grab their hands,” she said of these new converts. “I want to nurture these 20-year-old girls, because I wish I had that — something like that — when I was 20.”Younger’s latest batch of music, out Friday, feels like a nurturing, affirming message too. “Gadabout Season,” her third album for Impulse!, offers the best encapsulation yet of the tasteful, subtly radical sonic hybrid that she has been honing since she picked up the harp at age 11. It’s a persuasive argument for the vast, trans-idiomatic potential of her instrument.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      BTS Reunion Nears as RM and V Finish Military Service

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      RM and V emerged from a base in South Korea on Wednesday in fatigues. Three other members of the hugely popular boy band will finish their national service this month.RM and V of BTS emerged from a base in Chuncheon, South Korea, and gave fans a brief saxophone performance.Kim Hong-Ji/ReutersJin: check. J Hope: check. And on Tuesday, RM and V: check.That leaves only three members of the K-pop boy band BTS still doing their national service: Jimin, Jungkook and Suga. And when they too are discharged this month, their fans’ long wait will be over. BTS will be civilians again, and a vastly lucrative reunion can follow.RM and V emerged from a base in Chuncheon, South Korea, on Wednesday in military fatigues. V, 29, carried flowers, while RM, 30, had a saxophone on which he gave a brief impromptu performance on one knee.“There were tough and painful moments, of course,” RM said, as translated by The Korea Herald, “but during our service, I came to deeply appreciate the many people who have protected this country.”BTS’s record label, Big Hit Music, had pleaded with fans to stay home and not make a circus of the members’ discharges: “We kindly ask fans to send their warm welcome and support from their hearts.” But hundreds of screaming, camera-wielding, flag-waving fans showed up anyway.RM of BTS gave an impromptu saxophone performance after he and another member of the band, V, were discharged from South Korea’s military on Tuesday.Anthony Wallace/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNearly all able-bodied young men in South Korea are required to serve a year and a half of military duty.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How the Bay Area Shaped Sly Stone

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      One of the key figures in American music in the late ’60s got his professional start in the Bay Area. These are some of the spots that were crucial to his career.Several cities played outsized roles in the life of Sly Stone, the musical innovator who died on Monday at 82. There was Denton, the northern Texas town where he was born; Los Angeles, where he spent his later years; and even New York City, where he played several memorable concerts, including a Madison Square Garden date in 1974 at which he got married onstage. But no place was more central to Stone’s formation and rise than the Bay Area. His family moved there shortly after he was born, and it’s where he got his professional start and rose to stardom amid the multiracial psychedelic ferment of the 1960s. Here are five Bay Area spots important in his life.Solano Community College (formerly Vallejo Junior College)Stone’s first encounter with music came as a child in Vallejo, Calif., north of Oakland. His father was a deacon at a local congregation affiliated with the Pentecostal sect the Church of God in Christ, and when he was 8 years old, Stone, whose given name was Sylvester Stewart, and three siblings recorded a gospel track. Stone appeared in several bands in high school. And then for a stint in college, he studied music theory and composition — and picked up the trumpet, to boot — at Vallejo Junior College, today known as Solano Community College.Toni Rembe Theater (formerly the Geary Theater)He was best known for funk and psychedelic rock, but Stone’s eclecticism can be heard in the slow, firmly 1950s-style doo-wop music of the Viscaynes, one of his earliest groups. In an instance of foreshadowing, the Viscaynes, like the Family Stone, were multiracial at a time when that was exceedingly uncommon. (“To me, it was a white group with one Black guy,” Stone wrote in his memoir.) The Viscaynes recorded in downtown San Francisco underneath the Geary Theater, now known as the Toni Rembe Theater, and associated with the nonprofit company American Conservatory Theater.KSOL and KDIA radioStone became known for playing artists like the Beatles and Bob Dylan along with the usual soul and R&B his station specialized in.via Michael Ochs Archive/Getty ImagesStone attended broadcasting school in San Francisco and was then a D.J. at two local AM stations: KSOL, based out of San Mateo, and then KDIA, in Oakland. Both were aimed at Black listeners; KSOL, Stone wrote, had even changed its call sign to remind listeners that it played soul. But Stone again broke the mold, playing not just soul and R&B, but the Beatles and Bob Dylan. “Some KSOL listeners didn’t think a R&B station should be playing white acts,” he later wrote. “But that didn’t make sense to me. Music didn’t have a color. All I could see was notes, styles and ideas.”Mid-Century MonsterWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Touch Grass With an Unexpected 10-Song Nature-Bathing Playlist

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      Explore the outdoors however you see fit with a soundtrack of Doechii, Remi Wolf, Erykah Badu and more.Doechii, as near to nature as one can get on the Met Gala’s blue red carpet.Evan Agostini/Invision, via Associated PressDear listeners,As a pop culture reporter and editor at The New York Times, I spend much of my life toggling from one of a few modes to another: full-focus viewing, extensive conversation about said viewing, deep-think typing and — to cleanse my soul of all I’ve seen on all the screens — blissed-out nature bathing.Still, whether I’m kayaking down a river, hiking up a mountain, hanging around a campfire or swaying in a hammock, my phone tags along so I can listen to music. My tastes run the gamut, but us outdoorsy types sometimes get a reputation for gravitating primarily toward folk, reggae and acoustic light-rock tunes. There’s room in my heart for it all.But often, especially under a radiant sun or shimmering moon, I enter a mental space that can best be described as “forest girlie vibing hard.” The necessary ingredients: a splash of existential euphoria, a twist of party energy, an addictive groove and beats packed to the brim.Here are 10 songs I’ll have on repeat day and night while vacationing in Acadia National Park this summer, listening solo on headphones or triangulated on Bluetooth speakers with my crew.If the sun is bright, no matter where you are, this list will hit,MayaListen along while you read.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More